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To: fightinbluhen51

Not if SCOTUS says they can’t!


5 posted on 05/18/2009 9:54:45 AM PDT by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (It's all resistance...and it's all good.)
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To: 668 - Neighbor of the Beast

It was an 1895 supreme court ruling that stated that jurors “need not be told of their rights”. It didn’t say that jurors don’t have rights, only that they could be kept secret so we could have dumb jurors.


9 posted on 05/18/2009 10:01:43 AM PDT by cripplecreek (The poor bastards have us surrounded.)
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To: 668 - Neighbor of the Beast
Not if SCOTUS says they can’t!

You're wrong for two reasons. First, jurors can nullify and return a not-guilty verdict if they want to and there's nothing the court can do to stop them. They don't have to justify their votes or explain their verdict. Second, SCOTUS' take on this seems to be "Yes, jurors have the right to nullify, but it's a citizen's job to know his rights. If he doesn't know them, it's not the court's duty to educate him." Now that rationale, it seems to me, could justify not explicitly telling them they can nullify, but it certainly wouldn't cover lying to them and telling they're NOT allowed to do so.

31 posted on 05/18/2009 3:32:06 PM PDT by Still Thinking (If ignorance is bliss, liberals must be ecstatic!)
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To: 668 - Neighbor of the Beast

In fact the Supreme Court assumed they could judge the law.

It was an appealable error of the court if they did not so instruct the jury, until a case, I think it was Sparf, Hanson vs US, decided in 1895


48 posted on 05/18/2009 4:46:44 PM PDT by djf (Too many churches, and not enough truth...)
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